


Going home

by Liniochtai



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Billy Hargrove Lives, M/M, Road Trips, billy gets to go back to California
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-04
Updated: 2019-09-04
Packaged: 2020-10-10 04:09:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20521724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liniochtai/pseuds/Liniochtai
Summary: A huge green sign greeted them with the words « Welcome to San Francisco », and something lodged itself in his throat. He sped up. Now was not the time to suddenly be conscious of speed limits. After months stuck in Indiana, in the cold and the fear and the monsters, he was going home. He was not letting them catch up with him.





	Going home

**Author's Note:**

> This is a scene that stayed very vivid in my head after long hours exchanging headcanons about those boys with my friend (and so it's kind of a gift for them, hi), so I wrote it down and posted it in one go. I do hope everything makes sense and I didn't let a mistake slip past me.
> 
> Hope you enjoy, tell me what you think!

Billy felt like his chest was ready to explode with anticipation as he steered off the highway. The world had gone dark around them now, and everything inside the Camaro was quiet. There was only the low rumble of the motor and Billy’s heart beating faster and faster in his chest, his fingers tapping on the wheel and his knee bouncing up and down. If only he’d had some music to blast to wash over his nerves, but Steve had dozed off beside him somewhere around Sacramento, when the sun had gone down and Billy had refused to just find a motel there. Billy was fairly sure he wouldn’t appreciate being woken up by screaming guitars.

He looked over to where his — what exactly? Friend? Date? Fuck, what did you call someone you were kind of obsessed with for months, made an enemy of, and then a friend, and then made out with on the hood of your car in the middle of nowhere, Nevada? Anyway, he looked over at _Steve_, who slept with his mouth half-open and his face smushed against the window. His hair was sticking up oddly. Billy was not sure it would fall back into place when Steve woke up. It had gotten longer over the summer, always puffed up and swept back with more and more Farrah Fawcett hairspray. Billy often found his fingers itching to touch it, run his hand through it. Tighten his grip on the dark strands, see what Harrington would think of that.

It was a scary thought. Had especially been scary back in hick town Hawkins where everyone saw everything and his father was never far.

A huge green sign greeted them with the words « Welcome to San Francisco », and something lodged itself in his throat. He sped up. Now was not the time to suddenly be conscious of speed limits. After months stuck in Indiana, in the cold and the fear and the _monsters_, he was going home. He was not letting _them_ catch up with him.

Orange lights passed by, faster and faster, lighting up Steve’s profile, his straight nose, long eyelashes, the pout of his lips. Fuck, that was all real, wasn’t it? Steve Harrington was in his car, here, after a week of shitty roadside motels and long desert roads and greasy diners and corn mazes. After a searing hot kiss he hadn’t known how to deal with for a few hundred miles. After trembling hands under the stars. Shouted fears and whispered secrets and letting someone else drive his car. He’d come with him all this way. Billy still wasn’t sure why.

Fuck, he thought, he was almost there.

He didn’t drive into the city. They could do that later, in the morning maybe. Or to find a place to eat and sleep. But right now, the coast was the goal.

And then, suddenly, there it was. Billy stopped without a care for how he was parked. There was no one around anyways, just this empty lot at the end of the road, with a small lifeguard station and a surf cabin. It was just a patch of concrete, really, and then the sand, lit up by the Camaro’s headlights. He let out a shaky breath. There was a burning sensation behind his eyeballs. His hands and knees had stilled. He’d made it.

A beat, and Billy shot out of the car, his legs protesting when he got up, sore from hours behind the wheel. The door slammed behind him, but he barely heard it. Before he’d realized, he’d started screaming, screaming at the top of his lungs, months of rage and fear and anxiety coming out all at once, like a dam opening and all the water rushing out. The wind whipped his face, his hair was in his eyes, it was just his voice in the night and the sound of the crashing waves. Somehow he’d lived to see the ocean again.

Something unwound in his stomach and the scream became a laugh, wicked and wild and uncontrollable.

« What the _fuck,_ man?! »

Steve’s face was _priceless_, and if they’d been anywhere else, at any other time, Billy would have mocked him mercilessly for it. To be fair, Billy must have looked deranged, laughing like a maniac in the night.

He needed to move before he started crying too.

His white t-shirt hit the concrete first. He toed off his boots next, undid his belt and pushed down his jeans, leaving it all in a pile on the ground. A glint of light caught his eye. His medal. He hesitated for the barest second before taking off the chain it was dangling from, as well as his ring and earring. He opened the car’s door again to grab Steve’s hand. The other boy was staring at him, wide-eyed, visibly confused. Billy pressed the jewelry into his palm with a wink and a wild grin.

« Wait, wha… Dude, what are you _doing_? »

But Billy was already gone, running barefoot in the sand in just his black underwear. He ran and ran and the wind was cold and maybe a few tears ran down his cheeks as well but fuck it, he was _here_, fucking _finally_, he was here again. The first splash of the water around his ankles was a shock. He kept running. Running until there was nothing left to do but dive. The cold slapped him in the chest and he was _alive_. _His_ skin burning and _his_ muscles tensing and _his_ mouth full of salt. _His_ body in the ocean, _his_ heart beating hard, _his_ cheeks hurting from smiling like a fucking kid.

He stayed in as long as he could, letting the water and the salt wash over the last year’s worth of pain. He dove into wave after wave, the noise filling his ears, his head submerged in rhythm. For a while there was nothing else. Eventually though, he could feel his toes getting numb, so he got out before he would risk dying of hypothermia like an asshole.

He walked back up to the Camaro with goosebumps all over his body and what felt like a goofy smile on his lips. Steve was waiting for him with a scowl and a towel.

« Are you completely stupid, or just trying to give me a goddamn heart attack? » he said, but he couldn’t hide a smile when he handed Billy the towel (clearly something that belonged to the Harringtons, Billy certainly did not own anything that fluffy).

« What, too chickenshit to jump in, Harrington? »

« _I_ am not trying to get a pneumonia, thanks very much. I’ll wait until the sun’s up. »

« Right, you do that, princess. » Billy licked his lips, tasting salt. In the darkness, he wasn’t really sure if that made Steve blush. He hoped so.

He let his eyes linger a second longer on the way the headlights lit up Steve’s sharp jaw from below, and then went around the car to get his dry clothes back from where he’d abandoned them. Steve sat down on the hood, lighting up a cigarette, looking out to the sea. It shone silver where the moon reflected in the water.

He turned to look Billy in the eye when he came back, clothed and with his chest lighter than it had felt in a long, long time.

« Feel better? » Steve asked with smoke coming out of his lips.

Billy sat down next to him. Let their shoulders brush. He could always blame the goosebumps on his arms on the cold water, after all.

« Yeah. Better. »


End file.
